5/19 PBE Update: Missions testing and Balance Changes

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 7.11 PBE cycle, tonight's update includes the new missions system up for testing and a slew of various tentative balance changes.

Continue reading for more information!

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and subject to change - what you see below may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers at the end of the cycle! Manage your expectations accordingly.)

Missions now available for testing

"Hey, I hope you noticed the new Missions system on PBE with a bunch of placeholder missions. As a recap of the feature, check out the intro post here. We want to test out the functionality of Missions with some placeholder content (these missions won’t go live). These placeholders will exercise the system’s capabilities when getting new missions, making progress on a mission, completing one & getting the correct reward.

Here is the list of missions we’re testing out and how they generally should function. If you see anything odd or have feedback, please let us know.

We’re really excited to get this to live and hope you are too! As we get closer we’ll give more and more info.

Mission List:

2 chains of 3 Missions where you need to complete the last one to get the next

1 Mission that starts on Saturday and 1 Mission that starts on Sunday

1 Mission where the objective is an accumulation of completing other Missions

1 Mission where the objective is kills/assists

2 Missions where you need to play on a specific map

1 Mission becomes available if you have “banner of the serpent” ward skin"

Here are the various missions currently up on the PBE. Be aware these are placeholder examples, not actual quests that will go live:

Balance Changes

* Remember *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical or experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be lacking context or other changes that didn't make it in or were implemented in an earlier patch this cycle! These are not official notes.

(*!) = not in-game, pulled from client. seems to be a mismatch of some sort. Listing them for reference sake but understand they are not in-game or could be erroneous.

Champions

Kindred
[Reminder: Kindred currently has a big set of changes testing on the PBE! Below is relative to those but not a complete list.]

Smaller bits and pieces today. We should be in a spot where we can start talking about some of our plans for the rest of the year soon, for now we're still in mid-season followup time though.

Usual Disclaimers

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped.
If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler

Zac

Looks like we definitely overbuffed Zac in 7.10. We're looking at the best way to tone his power down at present, and figuring out just how out of line he is or isn't. Possible that happens in a hotfix, more likely 7.11 changes though unless we get a clear read on what exactly the biggest issue is and it looks urgent enough to not wait.

Guardian Angel

We've been testing a nerf to GA on the PBE, exploring a approach where it's less effective on champions doing really well already (higher CD, CD reduced if you're dying repeatedly, thereby bringing the total number of 'deaths' it procs on somewhat closer for winning/losing teams). That's shown some promise, we're going to hold off on shipping it or other changes for now though. It's not clear enough GA's a problem, rather than just really popular but overrated. Planning to reassess for the next patch.

Icon Updates

Should be a few more of these coming soon. Up next, Amumu and then, if memory serves Ahri.

Yasuo

Mid-season was kind to Yasuo, leaving him noticeably stronger. We're taking some power out in 7.11 as a result, reducing the duration he can hold his Q buff after hitting a target (both the initial buildup buff and the knockup buff). Some of that's reducing the duration Yasuo can threaten with the Q3. It's also intended to make Yasuo more dependent on allied knockups, making him a more or less attractive pick based off team comps. That's likely a direction we'll continue to investigate in future as well.

Le Blanc

We got back to looking at LB this patch. LB definitely needs work, she's been a problem since her update in pre-season. The changes we've been testing aren't hitting the mark at present however. We'll be looking at possible directions again next week. Apologies for ongoing lack of details on this one.

15 minute unanimous surrender

The early surrender option went out a few days ago in 7.10. We're seeing a bit of early friction around it in some games, based off the earlier test we ran in Oceania for a couple of months that's not unexpected. What we saw there was, after a settling down period, surrender rates before and after the introduction of the earlier option were unchanged. Effectively some games that would have been surrenders at 20 became surrenders at 15 instead. Other things we were measuring (afk rates, number of reports per game etc) didn't meaningfully change. We expect we'll see a similar trend in other regions, going to be keeping an eye on that though. If that's not the case would certainly be worth discussing adjustments (is this a feature that's a good fit for some regions but not others? Is 15 mins the correct time? Etc)."

"We'll be nerfing Lucian a bit. We think it's appropriate that BotRK is a strong item on some ADCs and that was one of its original intended goals that the recent changes to it were meant to reinforce.

We'll probably be increasing Lucian's Q mana cost, reduce his power across the game a bit that way, especially for non ER builds (when ER's in a decent spot Lucian should want to consider it). Might also reduce his ult range slightly, further reinforce the shorter range marksmen identity (less sure on that bit for now though)."

3)Ricklessabandonon changes missing from PBE / the mismatch in builds:

[1] "just looked into it, and it looks like the game client content didn't pull changes from most of yesterday ; _ ;"

[2] "will get resolved whenever we deploy next (which will likely be monday). so, i get to be sad about it for a while, haha."

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Check out [THIS PAGE] for a comprehensive list of the new content & changes currently on the PBE as a part of this cycle or catch up with the individual update links below !